Animal Crossing Almost Had A Better Title In The West But Nintendo Rejected It

Localizing video games can be challenging, and in the case of Animal Crossing, bringing the distinctly Japanese social-sim to the West in 2002 proved to be a Herculean labor. One of the big obstacles was renaming the game, as its Japanese title of Dōbutsu no Mori had to be changed for its Western release.

The entire localization job took between six months and a year to complete, former Nintendo of America localization manager Leslie Swan said to Time Extension, and one of the proposed titles was Animal Acres, a name that was inspired by the grids of the town. This was ultimately rejected by Nintendo, with the title of Animal Crossing being approved instead.

The late Satoru Iwata--who was the head of Nintendo's corporate planning division at that time--laughed when he heard that Swan and her team were working on the English localization. Game producer Takashi Tezuka had also warned the team about taking on the task, as they'd need to not only translate thousands of lines of text, but also rename characters, come up with new catchphrases for them, and figure out how to adapt Japanese-specific themes for Western audiences.